All In Startup: Launching a New Idea When Everything Is on the Line

Chapter 17Finding Out Your Assumptions Were Wrong Is Just as Valuable as Proving Them Right

By mid-afternoon, Owen had enough. Twenty-seven interviews. Twenty-seven! Not one person had listed price above a five. Were these people crazy? What did Las Vegas do to your internal compass that people in America did not care about price? After all, this was the land of dollar stores and dollar menus. Granted, the overlapping Venn diagram of people who bought composite carbon bike frames and shopped daily at Dollar Stores was probably small, but it existed. It had to exist. This was America, dammit!

Owen had even avoided the internationals who came into the store. Among the American crowd, there had been a couple of “can’t talk right now” folks, but really those 27 interviews represented a good half of the people that had entered the store. They’d all mentioned quality being high on their list. One guy said he comparison-shopped online, and then there was that couple that was considering a used bike. But even they had mentioned quality! How was it possible that none of the 27 people he talked to listed price as their number one issue?

When Owen had asked similar questions over a year ago, he thought he remembered a bunch of people telling him price was an overwhelming issue. Did he lead them to say that? Were they just confirming his own bias? No. There had to be other people out there. Maybe he was talking to the wrong customer segment, as Sam would say. The wrong group of people who ...